Massive thanks to those of you who help out the moderator team by flagging the spammer posts. We do what we can to catch and remove stuff as quickly as we can, but every little bit helps and flagging makes it easier for us to find and get rid of the spam faster.

Some newer members may not have been around when things were at their worst last summer and the site was getting hit with a constant barrage of crap. Actually, it still is, but now we've got the tools and the team in place to stay on top of it, and with everybody's help I think we've been doing a pretty good job. We may not find everything on the boards - if you see something that might not be right, flag it by clicking on the triangle with the exclamation point in it. That puts it on the radar for the mod team, where someone will review it and take the necessary action.

I love the description you (or one of you) posted a while back about the flagging process turning the spam "a seriously embarrassed glow of red" or something to that effect.

Tho I rarely get to be the first to flag one -- peeps here being on the ball as they are -- every so rarely (to coin a new timeframe) I do get that honour. And it DOES feel like a demooping victory!

Keepin' our streets CLEAN!!!

That said -- we all owe everyone on the mod team an extremely large heap of recognition for this aspect - which, tho perhaps not the hardest of their tasks is probably one that must get to be most tedious Every Single Day, Year In And Year Out.

Seems to me that regionals gets the most of it. That's certainly where the bulk spammers gravitate towards, though not so much with the context spammers. We made a number of changes to the board's configuration in the fall that put a wrench into some of the works, but I think they employ a lot of cheap third world labor that manages to get past google's Turing test.

Thank you to all the people who tag spam or questionable posts. There is a lot of reading involved in being a mod, and any help in sorting the spam or posts that have advertising in them is a huge help in keeping things in order. These posts become highlighted for easy swatting.

I've flagged posts that don't have links or advertising in them, but which "feel" "wrong" to me. I don't actually want to kick some honest if misguided contributer to the board; there is some sort of sniff test involved, yes?

The Lady with a Lamprey

"The powerful are exploiting people, art and ideas, and this leads to us plebes debating how to best ration ice.Man, no wonder they always win....." Lonesomebri

Thanks to the people that keep the house mostly clean, or rather as clean as possible as often as possible. Also a big thanks to all volunteers of all depts. This INCLUDES a BIG thanks to the ticketing people. Probably this shittiest job this year with all the nasty emails I am sure you are getting. But thanks for doing what you were charged with doing quickly so that whatever problems there are can be resolved from now until the gates open. Having put in volunteer time with other things in my life I know it can often be a thankless job with more complaints than accolades.

So again, thank you everyone, especially the tix volunteers.. keep your heads up and you'll pull through this.